Tag Archives: BCC

So this happened yesterday. I was at first a little out of sort. I was surprised by a head line in the Australian giving me ‘capitalizing on a $266m IT fiasco that fueled Birmingham’s bankruptcy’ this is a setting that happens to be a weird fiasco. You see the words uniting fiasco and Oracle is nothing short of a miracle. Oracle does not usually make these kind of mistakes EVER. And this sounds like an Australian kind of advisement towards their paid wall of settings. As I am not some Australian weirdo approach to their paid wall, I had to take another look and soon enough some f the words got me to the real deal and theft that it was merely one article gave me the setting that this wasn’t real. 

The article that gave me the ‘real’ deal was found at (at https://www.cio.com/article/3830277/how-birminghams-48m-oracle-erp-project-turned-into-an-epic-failure.html) here we get the deal. It was set by ‘How Birmingham’s $48M Oracle ERP project turned into an epic failure’ which was given on February 25th 2025. Still, to see Oracle combined with ‘epic failure’ was news, so I needed to know more. And the story start ‘strong’ with “A Grant Thornton audit reveals systemic governance, expertise, and vendor management failures led to catastrophic ERP rollout.” Shows us the little setting that this tends to go the road of Birmingham and not Oracle. With the hindsight “Birmingham City Council’s (BCC) troubled enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, built on Oracle software, has become a case study of how large-scale IT projects can go awry. The system, intended to streamline payments and HR processes, is now “unlikely” to function correctly before 2026 — four years after its 2022 launch. The project involved replacing the city council’s long-standing SAP system with Oracle Cloud.” So as we see it, the setting is now set towards another setting. That setting is “The catastrophic failure of the project, which has ballooned from an initial $48 million (£38 million) investment to an estimated $114 million (£90 million) after including re-implementation costs, stands as a stark reminder of how large-scale enterprise software projects can spiral out of control.” As I see it, it is another setting. We have saw something like this in 2016 min ‘The excuse from a failed politician’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2016/03/27/the-excuse-from-a-failed-politician/) where the Labor government pretty much wasted £11 BILLION on a non-working NHS system, as such this is not new in political povernment (funny typo), so we have seen this before. I see this as someone in government sees this as the ‘golden’ opportunity to make his (or her) grind in the way of things and let this grow this out of hand into the behemoth the eats them alive.

So while CIO gives the right question, but they might go ‘lightly’ over the failure of the setting. And they give us “The audit revealed that the project’s budget ballooned from an initial £19 million to over £90 million, with delays pushing the system’s full functionality to 2026—four years beyond the planned 2022 launch.” As I see it, I have seen this kinda before decades ago where we get two elements together a sales person who wants to make an entry and someone in government wants to appeal to ‘their’ friends by giving the entire collective a setting that is not entirely manageable. The salesperson wants this deal as it makes his collective revenue shine and the other side as they have no clue what they are doing, but they have ‘friends’ who wants a player like Oracle to strike out. So the sales person contact everyone in support until they find that person who signs off on it (I didn’t) and they go from person to person until they get the ‘willing’ support person who gives them the heads up. I opposed as it would never work, but the sales person found the one support person who signed off on it and he avoided my assessment. You see, when the deal comes through he merely needs to keep me away from it (didn’t work) because after the quarter was finished he pays the person back but his commission is no longer touchable. And that is not how I believe things should work. The second setting is the ‘friend’ tactic. As such someone feeling ‘blue’ (subtle hint) gets to say make sure it includes A, B and C (they know it all never work) and as such Oracle goes down and they become the winner as they ‘suddenly’ have an option. This is how the players in the wrong setting are thrust upon the daily lives of government. 

Did that happen here?

Can’t tell, but the more you read here, the more you see that It was NOT the flaw that Oracle introduce, it was another flaw and you might see this when you see ““Integration with Oracle’s systems proved more complex than expected, leading to prolonged testing and spiraling costs,” the report stated. Payroll integration issues, combined with the volume and quality of data migration, required extensive retesting, further inflating costs. BCC’s heavy reliance on Oracle and external consultants became a double-edged sword. While third-party expertise was essential, it also weakened internal control over the project’s financial and operational outcomes.”

So we get there with the next part. 

CIO media gives us “The governance-expertise gap

The investigation uncovered a governance structure plagued by fundamental weaknesses.  At the heart of Birmingham’s ERP crisis lies what we might term the “governance-expertise gap” – a critical disconnect between oversight responsibilities and technical understanding. The absence of Oracle expertise within the council’s digital department created a dangerous scenario where those responsible for governance lacked the technical foundation to evaluate and challenge their implementation partners effectively.” As I see it, the initial Australian setting was wrong in the very least and I recon (especially as the headline changed) that the Australian headline (which was thrust upon me on LinkedIn) as 

I added the image on how I was ‘misinformed’ and perhaps Oracle wants to have a go at these people too. 

So as CIO is giving it a realistic brush (by painting IT environment of Birmingham stupid) we see the second setting and as we approach that ‘critically’ we might see an Oracle failure or two, They did not make the actual flaw. It is seen in 

“Moreover, the lack of technical oversight led to the acceptance of extensive customizations that violated their own “adopt not adapt” principle, accepting extensive customizations to align with existing business processes based on their legacy SAP system. Change requests affecting critical aspects of the solution were accepted late in the implementation cycle, creating unnecessary complexity and risk.” Where we see the adherence to a legacy system and for a council their data is their strength and “The council’s approach to governance showed a startling lack of independent oversight. Despite the program’s complexity and critical nature, no review was undertaken by Internal Audit until just before go-live.” Which is an actual failure, but not by Oracle, it is the Birmingham government that should have acted when possible, I reckon that the people involved saw the golden rainbow markers as their golden opportunity. If there is an Oracle failure it is at this point where the Oracle head honcho should have applied all breaks and talk to the Lord Mayor of Birmingham bringing his attention to the initial $48 million (£38 million) investment to an estimated $114 million (£90 million) after including re-implementation costs. I reckon that when the £60 million tag was reached someone should have drawn attention to this (perhaps they did)

It is when CIO brings attention to ‘Culture of silence and suppression’ that I wonder who was at fault, nothing here shows the flaw of Oracle, As I personally see it, the blundering setting of a seemingly absent Omnibus, a written account of what or who did what and how it was received in that office setting might be at risk of showing the real audit failure and I am willing to bet that Oracle has nothing to do with it. 

A mere collective feeling, but I have seen Oracle set the trends and projects for decades and this does not feel like an Oracle flaw, It might be as simple as Australian fear mongering advertisement settings, but there you have it. With little effort we see that the ‘Oracle Blunder’ was omitted by simple tracking and perhaps I am tracking the ‘wrong’ setting but there you have it, Australian is now getting into hot water by paid wall settings and fear mongering. So be it.

Have a great day today. It is time for some snoring if possible. Feeling a little tired today.